So I'm trying to think of a scenario where there is no queen in a hive and no queen cells either. If the queen is failing,why wouldnt they make cells? My inspections werent far enough apart for them to make cells and the queen didnt make it back from her mating flight. If the queen suddenly died,why wouldnt they make cells? They'd have about 6 days to make cells once noticing there was a problem with the queen (from an egg to 3 day old larvae). I could see if they were honey bound and the queen had no where to lay,then several days later she died.